“If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert.” - Australian psychiatrist W. Béran Wolfe

Greetings & Thanks for Visiting!

I'm a web viking and digital marketing ninja (SEO, SEM, email, social media, landing page optimization, lead generation, etc. ) responsible for Cool Site of the Day, the Internet's oldest directory (launched in 1994). I'm also Google Adwords Qualified and am one of only .5% with direct access to Google corporate.
One of my goals with Cool Site of the Day is to shine a light on all the cool websites since the beginning of cyber time.

Cool Site of the Day has featured a unique site every day since August of 1994...nearly 9,000 sites!

As for my approach to Internet marketing and SEM, the following quote says it all:

“That which is measured improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially.” (Pearson's Law found on Mark Joyner'sSimpleology)

More background

In 1993, I was the first person to promote music on the Internet for the major record labels (via bulletin boards and primitive websites!). After 5 years working for the music industry, I bought Cool Site of the Day (1998).

I have been quoted in several online and offline publications including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and am usually available for interviews and speaking engagements.

Sometimes I find time to offer consulting services...

If you do decide to contact me for a consultation, know that we will FOCUS on keyword research and competitor analysis INTENSELY (believe me, it will save you hours/days/months/years of heartbreak). THEN, you will know if your idea has a shot; if not, I will likely redirect you towards a more lucrative path.

"Mike Corso is incredible. Our heads hurt from the number of good ideas to track down after consulting with him for 30 minutes. Thanks, Mike!" -Jake, piclits.com
“Thanks for your insight and site evaluation. We have moved from PR3 to PR5 on one of our main landing pages thanks to you. We are on our way up thanks to your professional evaluation and valuable input. We have not implemented all of your suggestions as we have a small staff here. Thanks Again!" - Bruce Richards
“Mike Corso will show you the proper way of doing things. There is no hidden agenda, just pure information and action. You must be sleeping at the wheel if you do not get on board with Mike and his 'Crazy Train'!!” -David A.
"Keep up the good work. You really have a winner of a site, and what a way to help new sites generate the traffic they need when they first launch." -- John H.

How Important Is Onsite Content for SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is often referred to as a standalone marketing strategy, but the reality is that it comprises multiple interdependent strategies. Some people spend most of their time working on the content on individual pages of their site (the onsite content), while others invest all their resources into ongoing blogging, and still others focus primarily on building inbound links. Any search optimizer worth their salt will spend some attention on all three of these dimensions, but is one any better than the others?

Specifically, just how important is onsite content for SEO?

The Role of Onsite Content

Some webmasters treat onsite content as a (mostly) one-time effort, hiring a service like Rightly Written to make sure their web content is appealing to visitors and simultaneously optimized for search engine visibility. Others make ongoing tweaks to try and perfect their individual content pages. In either case, they’re trying to accomplish the following goals:

Domain authority. Domain authority is a qualitative measure of how trustworthy a site is, and the higher that number is, the more likely your site is to rank. Google evaluates the quality of the content on your site using several criteria, including the quantity of content, the amount of detail present, and how intelligible the content is. The full set of criteria isn’t documented, but it’s clear that the quality of your onsite content has some impact on your domain authority.

Keyword relevance. Onsite content also presents a great opportunity to optimize your site for specific keywords; you can create designated “core” pages of your site to target specific keywords and phrases that you want to be associated with your domain. Since these will be “anchor” pages of your site, they’ll be treated with higher relevance, and you can quickly build your site’s ranking potential for the most important keywords for your brand.

Inbound link attraction. Though blogging is more commonly used for link building purposes, you can also use strong core content on your site to attract more links to your domain, which will boost your domain and page authority. For example, if you have a dense “resources” section, or permanent “how to” guides in your main navigation, this could represent a perfect opportunity to earn some powerful inbound links.

Visibility in SERPs. Even if you spend much of your time creating new blog posts and linking to them, your core pages will still have a high tendency to show up in search engines, thanks to your ever-increasing domain authority. In these entries, your page titles, descriptions, and some of your onsite content will be the first things visitors see before deciding whether to visit your site. Accordingly, it’s essential to have these pages optimized properly.

User behavior effects. Though not directly related to SEO, it’s also important to note that the quality of your onsite content will also affect the user behavior on your site. Pages like Home, About, and Contact pages will often determine user impressions of your brand, and whether or not they go through with contacting you, possibly increasing or decreasing the overall value of your SEO strategy.

How Does It Stack Up?

Ongoing blogging and link building both have a variety of effects, just like onsite content does. Ongoing blogging, for example, gives you constant new opportunities to optimize for long-tail keyword phrases and attract new links with high-quality content. Without link building, it would be nearly impossible to establish a baseline domain authority high enough to see meaningful results. In this way, onsite content optimization couldn’t work without ongoing blogging and link building, but neither of those strategies could work without the right onsite content serving as a foundation.

It’s hard to compare these three dimensions of SEO, since each has drastically different effects on your site’s rankings and visibility, and all of them are, on some level, necessary for you to be successful.

So Just How Important Is Onsite Content for SEO?

Ultimately, onsite content is very important for the success of an SEO campaign; in fact, it could be described as essential. Without good onsite content in place, your domain authority may never reach an acceptable level and your visibility in search engines will plummet. But at the same time, it’s only one piece of the SEO puzzle. If you only focus on onsite content, and neglect other areas like ongoing blogging or inbound link building, you still won’t find much success. Keep your individual SEO strategies in balance if you want to see the best results.